An astonishingly rich oral epic that chronicles the early history of a Bedouin tribe, the Sirat Bani Hilal has been performed for almost a thousand years. In this ethnography of a contemporary community of professional poet-singers, Dwight Fletcher Reynolds reveals how the epic tradition continues to provide a context for social interaction and commentary.

Reynolds's account is based on performances in al-Bakatush, the northern Egyptian village in which he himself studied as an apprentice to a master epic-singer. The author explores in detail the narrative structure of the Sirat Bani Hilal as well as the tradition of epic-singing, and he pays particular attention to the relationship between today's singers and their wider community.

Focusing on the sahra, or private evening performance, Reynolds sees both living epic poets and fictional epic heroes as figures engaged in an ongoing dialogue with audiences concerning such vital issues as ethnicity, religious orientation, codes of behavior, gender roles, and social hierarchies. By placing performance at the center of the process of composition, Reynolds is able to discern how the social dimensions of the past have been embedded in the modern text.